Organizing Albums

I've been trying to understand how iTunes puts together albums. I've had an issue where my ipod touch would have several entries for the same album. It makes one entry per artist, and sometimes has the same songs in the albums. I've googled several times before, but am still confused.
First, I'd like to know, is there is a difference if I select all of my music and set it as "part of compilation"; vs selecting individual albums and selecting "part of compilation." From what I gather, this option keeps the album together as "various artists." However, this has failed me a couple times in itunes before. Especially if I change it on my ipod. (I heard that you must delete and add the music again).
Second, iTunes will sometimes keep the tracks out order even though the metadata is set correctly. (disc, and track #s, album names, etc.)
My third question is, is there an easy way to backup ratings of music? I've deleted things from my ipod before, but I'd like my library to keep the rating without deleting the song itself. This goes for anything else I'll rate. I'd want it to keep the ratings.
Regardless of my options, I absolutely would want to have a backup up what itunes has built. I don't let it copy or manage my music, but I do want to keep the database so I won't have to start over again.
Any comments and suggestions are welcome.

I have never used an iPod so I cannot answer those questions. The only thing I can comment is from reading what others have said, things don't always behave the same on ipods.
Compilation - only use this where you have to. Let's say you had several albums with the same name by different artists. "Greatest Hits." There's hundreds of those. If you flag those as compilation you end up with all yoru Greatest Hits in one album.
Tracks being out of order can have several reasons. First is usually people have the column sorted by another thing such as name. Next, the data for the tracks has to be exactly identical. All letters capitalized. Same number of spaces (check for invisible ones at the end). Make sure the disc numbering is the same, and if there isn't any, make sure there isn't any for all tracks. Sometimes if things look the same it helps to add an extra letter on at the end, save, then edit again to remove the letter. Even then you will come across the one in a thousand track that refuses to go in order.
No easy way to back up ratings. I have used modified scripts to store data that isn't part of the regular tagging attached to the files to store the data in another field that is part of the tags. I don't use BPM so I store my own encoding in it for other things I do. I guess you were asking this in connection with iPods so it doesn't matter since I haven't used one.
Even if you don't make a backup of your media very often, if you change the library a lot and want a backup, make a duplicate of the library.itl file since that is the masterfile of all you see.

Similar Messages

Iphoto and organizing albums...

I'm slowly learning iphoto and I'm having a hard time with organizing albums/folders. I like to organize my pictures by using albums/folders like in windows. I've created albums/folders and I'm taking the photos from events and putting them into these newly named albums/folders. The problem is that when I go to move them around to organize by my preference, I can't drop and drag without the album/folder going into another album/folder. It does allow me to drop to the bottom, but it goes into the last album/folder and then I have to move it out of that. It's very cumbersome and there has to be an easier way, I'm making due, but I'm doing things that are very confusing and time consuming.

Folder drag and drop the same way as albums do. Movie Test Folder 1 to between the other two folders:
Select, drag and drop
to give you this:
One just needs to be sure the cursor is at the far left before releasing.
OT

Organizing albums per year in my iPod

Friends,
I find that organizing albums per year is much more convenient than by alphabetical order.
And makes much more sense, to me.
Now this is no problem when you're in iTUnes, as you can visualize all your music both ways, per year, alphabetically (and many more, actually.
But when I'm listening through my iPod???
my iPod organizes albums alphabetically by default.
In order to have an artist's albums organizes by year, I see no way but adding the year in front of the title.
1961 - Bob Dylan
1962 - Freewheelin
1963 - The Times They Are a-Changin'
and so on.
Which works ok, but it's definitely ugly.
Let alone the fact that I cannot browse them alphabetically anymore and I find myself having an infinite lists of dates instead of a list of titles.
Is there a way to tell my iPod to organize my albums by year even if the *physical number* is not printed in the title?
(the way you do when you're in iTunes)
Hope I've been clear
Thanks a lot for any answer.
Beppe

I've been wanting to do that too.
I haven't tried this yet, but give it a whirl. Before the title of each album by an artist, put a letter in front. For instance, if you have ten albums under Dylan, put the letter "A" in front of the title of the earliest album, "B" in front of his second and so on.
Searching by album would not work, but I never do that anyway. I usually go to the artist first, then look for the album.

Organizing albums into one album

We are new to the Mac world and have a large number of pictures to be organized,
In iPhoto, are you able to create "sub-albums"? For example, if we have photos of a number of related events, like football games in a season, can we have an album "Football Games 2010" with a number of albums within it like "Football Game 1", "Football Game 2", etc?
If iPhoto won't do this, is there another software application for the Mac that will?
Thanks in advance!

Like Terence suggested you can create a folder/album hierarchy like this:
OT

Organizing Albums in iPhoto on the iPad/iPhone

I have an iPad Air and an iPhone 5, and prefer to have my photos arranged by Albums, Not "events" But in iPhoto on these, when I look at the album view it arranges the albums alphabetically, whereas I want to have them arranged by topic - the topic organization I choose.
I edit and create the albums in iPhoto on my Mac, and have them organized the way I want there. Why doesn't it keep that arrangement of the albums? I can't find out any way to rearrange them the way I want them.
Why can't we organize things the way we want?
By the way, it is much easier to edit and organize o nthe mac, with its bigger screen and extra screens.
Also, is there a way to have Photos, or iPhoto (on the iPad & iPhone) access the keywords and titles I have given them in iPhoto on the Mac?
Thanks

Apply the two fixes below in order as needed:
Fix #1
1 - launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.
iPhoto 8 (09) and earlier- run the options indicated
iPhoto 9 (11) and later- run Option #4 to rebuild the database
Fix #2
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 - download iPhoto Library Manager (iPhoto 8 or earlier or IPhoto 11 and later) and launch.
2 - click on the Add Library button and select the library you want to add in the selection window..
3 - Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the
File ➙ Rebuild Library (iPhoto 8 or earlier)
or
Library ➙ Rebuild Library (iPhoto 9 or later)
menu option to rebuild the library.
4 - In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
5 - Click on the Create button.
Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.
OT

Organizing albums with same artist and album name

This has bothered me for some time.
I have Bob Dylan's 1973 album titled "Dylan," as well as his 2-disc greatest hits of the same name. iTunes has merged the albums together. I made sure the release dates on the songs are different, and even tried changing the sort titles, but iTunes still treats them as one album and mixes the songs together.
Is there any way I can teach/tell iTunes that these albums should be organized separately??
Thanks.

Change greatest hits to "Dylan - Greatest Hits"
I have Bob Dylan's 1973 album titled "Dylan," as well as his 2-disc greatest hits of the same name.
When was this greatest hits released?
There is Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits in 1967 and Bob Dylans Greatest Hits Volume 2 in 1971.
Then there is Dylan in 2007 but it is 3 discs.

Organizing albums and artwork

Hello.. I'm having trouble organizing my songs which are part of an album in iTunes. In the new grid album view of iTunes 8.0, I have all my songs appearing separately even though they are part of the same album and have the same artwork.
For example, there are 15 songs under Ministry of Sound and each appears as stand alone album containing one song each. It looks very disorganized since there are now 15 albums containing one song when it should be 1 album containing the 15 songs! And this is across my iTunes library and I've tried to drag and drop them into one but its not possible for some vague reason. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this?
Thank you.

Hi, your MoS album is a compilation. Select all the tracks, press CMD-I to open the Get Info box. On the Info tab enter *Various Artists* as the Album Artist and on the Options tab set Part of a compilation to Yes. You should also set the iTunes Advanced Preference *Group compliations when browsing*.
See below for an extensive list of iTunes organisation issues & workarounds.
*Grouping tracks into albums*
The iPod (and iTunes to a lesser extent) conflates two or more albums with the same title, most obviously with *Greatest Hits*. On the iPod this can result in one album acting as a combination of two or more. Selecting any cover gives all the tracks of all albums with the same title. The workaround for this "Greatest Hits" bug is to give each album a unique title - I tend to go for *Album - Album Artist* as this reads clearly in the iTunes browser. Alternatively you could use the wording as it appears on the cover, append different numbers of spaces for each different album or set different values for the Sort Album.
iTunes relies on the Gracenote CDDB database when identifying CD's. This often marks collections or anthologies of an artist's work as a compilation. In iTunes, however, the compilation flag has the logical function of grouping together tracks with the same album name, but different artists on each track, e.g. "Now That's What I Call Metal 666!". These compilations are then all grouped together at the end of cover flow. Most of us however, would expect "Greatest Hits" albums to be listed with the other albums by the same album artist. For albums which are essentially by a single album artist or group it is best to set the appropriate value for the album artist and clear the compilation flag.
Sadly the iPod ignores the Album Artist field when grouping albums which causes problems when some tracks list guest artists. You can simply mark the entire album as a compilation which seems to be the way iTMS handles it, however that's not an ideal fix. Short of waiting for Apple to address this issue (and as far as I can tell it goes back to the 1st gen. of iPods) we need a workaround. What I do is to put any additional artist info. in square brackets after the song name. E.g. *Track \[Feat. Guest\]* and then set *Artist=Album Artist* for each track. For anthologies where the Album Artist is credited as part of another group, e.g. for Cream tracks on an Eric Clapton anthology, I use *Track \[As Group\]*. For a track where the main Album Artist doesn't receive a credit, e.g. the first track of the Slim Shady LP credited to Jeff Bass, I just set the track name to *Track \[Guest\]* while still setting the artist to the album artist. N.b. I use square brackets to indicate this is information about the track rather than part of the song title and also use this style for Mix/Live/Bonus info.
iTunes may split albums into two or more sections if some tracks from the album have different values for Artist, Album Artist, Album, No. of Discs or Part of a Compilation. Tiny differences such as trailing spaces, accented characters or variants of symbols can sometimes be quite hard to spot. The iPod is also more sensitive to case variations and may split or reorder an album that looks okay in iTunes. Normally overtyping the desired value for each shared field will complete the grouping of the album into one entity. Occasionally, however, this method seems to fail. When this happens I've found that you can force every field to update properly by adding some extra text - e.g. a trailing X, which once applied seems to complete the joining of the tracks into one album. Once this has happened the extra data can be removed and the album should remain properly grouped.
The Sort Artist, Sort Album & Sort Album Artist fields can be used to override the normal sort order. For example iTunes automatically drops leading prepositions (a/an/the) so "The Beatles" are arranged under "B" instead of "T". Occasionally different tracks from the same album can have different values in these sort fields which can also break up the grouping. Making the sort columns visible in iTunes can help with spotting & correcting such problems.
Multi-disc albums are often listed as *Album (CD1)* for CD 1, *Album (CD2)* for CD 2 etc. To display these properly using just one cover, each disc should have the correct *Disc X of Y* values set, and then the entire album should be given the single title Album. Being somewhat obsessive I also renumber the tracks sequentially, working backwards from the last track until I reach disc 1.
With classical music you also need to be wary of alternative representations of artist/composers names. The menus will work best if for each composer you standardise on just one form of their name. E.g. make a choice between Mozart, W.A. Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and then apply it consistently. I tend also to use the Composer as the Artist & Album Artist and either discard performer details or place these into the Description field. (I’d use Comments but iTunes has a habit of writing long hex strings into it for no readily apparent reason).
tt2

Three questions: new songs, two devices, organizing albums

I have searched and searched and still have three questions that I can't find an answer to. I hope you guys can help.
1) I have a few albums that are not organized with each other and are duplicates and such, when I upload to itunes match, will those be organized from apple's database?
These were songs from cd's, friend's hd, etc.
2) when I upload new songs in the future from cd's I may buy or put new songs in itunes that I don't buy from apple, are those uploaded to match automatically?
3) I'm sure this one has been answered already...but, can my wife and I use the same match library on two separate devices?
thanks!

Locate the "DEVICES" menu in the left column of iTunes, and click on the name of your iPod. This should display the "Summary" tab, giving you information about the iPod. Scroll down until you see a check box that says "Open iTunes when this iPod is Connected," and uncheck it. This will stop the iPod from automatically syncing. Good luck

Organizing Albums with Multiple Discs

I have a lot of albums that have many discs. There seems to be two options for organizing them on my iPod. I can either 1) Label the individual disks as "Album: [Disc X]" and have many "albums" appear on my iPod, or 2) Label the discs as "Album," and have all of the discs appear under a single album on my iPod. Unfortunately, I have some very large albums (e.g., a collection of music by Beethoven that has 85 cd's). Neither of the above two options are optimal for these large collections. What I would like is if my iPod would allow albums with multiple discs to have a submenu listing those disks (i.e., one would have Music > Albums > Beethoven > Disc X). Is something like this possible? If not, are there any other ways of organizing these albums that I've failed to consider? Thanks!

There's no way of sub-dividing the album into separate discs while still keeping a single cover. For a box set scenario you might with to consider breaking things down differently. For example I have a 3 disc Tom Lehrer album which comprises 5 original albums and some odd individual releases. Rather than a single album of 70 tracks I've turned this into 6 albums, each with different artwork. For your complete works of Beethoven you could choose a different way of dividing the works into related groups other than by the original disc no. but you'll probably still have to live with multiple covers. Alternatively put it all under one cover but build a selection of playlists which you actually use to get access to the specific items of interest instead of trying to scroll through say 500 tracks.
See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for more organisational tips.
tt2

Help with organizing Albums

Hey, im not sure if this is possible or not, but its what i want. In my pictures folder, i have organized my own pictures into different folders, for instance, i have Pics with Friends, My Birthday, Family, etc. I also have the Photo Booth folder which is constantly getting new additions each time i use photo booth (i use it alot). Now what i want is to have iPhoto recognize these different folders as different albums, and have them them auto update. If i take pics of my friends, and put them in the friends folder, they will appear in the friends album in iPhoto. Is this possible? Or is there something i can do that will work like this?

Not that I'm aware of. There are a number of iPhoto scripts sites (just Google for them) that might. Also inquire in the Applescript forum.
The only downside to that that I can see is you'll get a lot of rolls with just one or two photos in them. But that should be only a minor problem as you can move them to other rolls as desired.
Be sure to make that request for auto-updating at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html. The more requests the better.
Do you Twango?

How do I access my stored organized albums from another pc?

Hi How or is it possible to access my organised photo albums on one pc from another pc keeping the albums and category names intact ?

Go to http://www.icloud.com/ and sign-in

Organizing albums in the Zen Mi

I am using Creative MediaSource to transfer folders from the PC to the Zen Micro. I copy folder to folder by dragging the folder to the right side. It shows as a folder. I did this with 24 folders. When I disconnected the Zen Micro from the PC and turned it on I see only 5 folders and all of the rest of the tracks under "unknown" How do I get all folders to list as folders? Thanks.

I have a similar problem. I am computer literate, so this is killing me. I cannot organize my music in folders using the standard windows explorer. The Explorer window displays the folders, the Creative MediaSource recognizes the folders, but the Zen Micro does not display the folders.
I know that the Zen Micro Media Explorer might help, but the Zen Micro Media Explorer does not recgnize that the unit is plugged in. I have tried all USB ports, etc. I have installed the software twice without hiccu
ps.
I have updated all downloads from the website. What else can I do.
I simply want to organize my songs in folders like "travel music," "riding music," "lifting," etc., but the Zen micro only keeps the songs in generic folders categorized by artist, album, and genre. I also tried to create a playlist on the Zen Micro, but when I am playing a song and choose the add to playlist function, it puts EVERY song in that folder on the playlist. For example, I go to the "rap" genre and play 50 cent "Candy Shop." I add to playlist "Candy Shop" but all songs in the CL "Rap" folder go to the playlist. All I want is to organize my music how I want and for the Zen Micro interface to recognize it. Thanks for any help you can give.

Organizing Album by Artist/Year When Multiple Albums a Year

I'm so OCD I want to organize my albums chronologically by year, but if a band has multiple albums in one year, it organizes them alphabetically. Is there a way I can specify the actual date or at least month, so my albums will properly be in order?

Tom,
When you click on the left side of the column head (on the title), it cycles between Album, Album by Artist, Album by Year.
When you click on the right side of the column head (over the arrow) it toggles between Ascending/Descending (Up/Down arrow).
Multipass.
Jim

IPhoto exports small number of photos to desktop or thunbdrive. I'm unable to transfer a 360-photo album to thumbdrive so I tried fixes listed in other iPhoto SC letters. I batch organized album files w/ seq. numbering. Works for small number files.

What are the details about your computer and OS?

Hi TD,
I tried what you suggested on photos that were not exported in my previous attempts. I found all orginal photo files within the folders that were associated with the specific days when the photos was taken. That iPhoto action seems to work. I had not previously tried that iPhoto command so learned something new.
Do you have any other ideas of what to try? Worse comes to worse, I could export 26 seperate folders of Exports from my iPhoto album on my hard drive and separately put them onto the thumb drive. But, as you know, we have to BEAT the Apple software and computer. I know that it becomes somewhat of an obsession.
Have a good day.

Organizing Albums in Folders still possible in iPhoto '08?

Hi everyone,
I still have to upgrade to iPhoto '08 but there is one thing that puts me off: when watching the online tutorial it seems that you can't add folders anymore in iPhoto '08 and subsequently can't organize albums in diffferent folders, which is what i need, however.
Can anyone of you who already use the software tell me whether the use of folders is still possible in iPhoto '08 or not?
Thanks so much in advance,
Peter

Hi, Peter!
I just installed iLife '08 and finished upgrading. I can put albums in folders just fine. New Folder is in the File menu. Something feels simpler but I can't put my finger on it. Anyhow, the categories (in caps) do fold up if you click the triangles. This should be useful indeed.

Organizing albums into printable list

Is there any way to import just my album list to Excel or Word? I tried to export my library as an Excel file, but that didn’t give me what I wanted. That listed where they are in my computer. A file list.
I just need a list of my albums to print.
iPod 30 GB Windows XP Pro haven't had an "apple" since the IIe, tastes good to be back.

hiya!
here's another possibility. not sure whether it's going to fit your needs, though.
in itunes, go "file > print"
select "Album listing"
in the themes, select "List of albums"
it actually breaks down the list by artist. here's a screenshot of what my library printout looks like:
list of albums printout
if you've got long album names in your library, you might want to print in landscape rather than portrait format. (click "Page setup" and select "landscape".) it uses up a bit more paper (my "portrait" version is 6 pages long, and my landscape version is 8 pages), but it doesn't cut the ends off the really long album titles.
love, b

Organizing Albums

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for